HANDEL – Domestic Opera

$17.40

Hank Knox – Harpsichord2009, EMCCD7770

In the eighteenth century, the only way to enjoy opera out of season was to perform it in a reduced format. Some of the most widely circulated editions and manuscript copies were devoted to solo keyboard transcriptions, most notably in England those of operas by Handel, who had triumphantly entered the stormy waters of Italian opera in London in 1711 with his Rinaldo. This recording features keyboard transcriptions of excerpts from this and other operas, by Handel himself and by the versatile William Babell. Hank Knox plays these works with all the bravura and sentiment that swayed contemporary audiences in Handel’s own performances. The historical English harpsichords used are from the Benton Fletcher Collection of Early Keyboard Instruments at Fenton House in London.

The entire program is both entertaining and uniformly fascinating…. The instrument by Swiss-English builder Burkat Shudi and Johannes Broadwood, from 1770, would soon face competition from the up-and-coming fortepianos produced by their own firm and others. It included various devices for generating dynamic contrasts, several of which are employed here in Knox’s colourful, kinetic performances. An excellent job all around from Knox and the early-music.com label, which has been successfully drawing on the large pool of top-notch talent available in the Montreal area. – James Manheim, Allmusic.com, 2009

Hank Knox studied harpsichord with John Grew at McGill University in Montreal and with Kenneth Gilbert in Paris. He has given numerous harpsichord recitals, and is a founding member of Arion baroque orchestra, with whom he has toured Canada, the United States, Europe, Japan, South America and Mexico. He has performed, recorded and toured with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and le Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal; he plays regularly with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. He has recorded for Radio-Canada and the CBC, and appears on recordings with Arion on the early-music.com, Atma, Analekta, CBC, Titanic and Collegium labels. His has released a recording of Frescobaldi’s keyboard works performed on an Italian harpsichord of 1677 on the Atma label, and a recording of works by D’Anglebert performed on an upright harpsichord for early-music.com. A recording of Handel opera arias and overtures in transcriptions for harpsichord by Babell and Handel on instruments from the Benton Fletcher collection at Fenton House in London is due for release in the fall of 2008 on the early-music.com label, along with a second recording of harpsichord works of Frescobaldi on the 1677 Italian harpsichord, as well as harpsichord works by Sweelinck.

Hank Knox directs the Early Music program at McGill University, where he teaches harpsichord and figured bass accompaniment, coaches chamber music ensembles, and conducts the McGill Baroque Orchestra. He has been a William Dawson Scholar in recognition of his work in Early Music since 2003, and was awarded the Thomas Binkley prize for an outstanding university collegium director by Early Music America in 2008. In collaboration with Opera McGill, he has directed productions of Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas, Handel’s Giulio Cesare, Alcina, Semele and Radamisto, Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, Telemann’s Don Quichotte, Les sauvages from Rameau’s Les Indes galantes, and Peri’s Euridice.